One year since the GM bankruptcy

[Hannah Bell]

A year ago this week US auto giant General Motors declared bankruptcy in the largest industrial failure in US history... the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs, the shuttering of dozens of assembly and parts plants and the closing of more than 1,000 car dealerships...By 2012, GM’s restructuring plan in the US calls for eliminating 31,000...employees from its US workforce of 96,000...to cut GM’s payroll expenditures by 30 percent...

In addition to the job cuts, the wages and benefits left at the “New GM”—which emerged from the bankruptcy courts on July 10, 2009—were ruthlessly slashed...wages for current workers have been frozen and cost-of-living increases eliminated, break time and holidays substantially reduced and retirees stripped of medical benefits, including dental and optical care.

The next generation of auto workers will fare even worse. The starting wage of new workers—$14 an hour—translates to an annual gross income of $28,000 before taxes and union dues are deducted. This is less than half the median annual US household income and barely above the government’s grossly underestimated poverty threshold for a family of four...

As a result, the automaker recently announced that its net income rose to $865 million, by contrast to the $6 billion it lost in the same period last year. Moreover, while workers have had their jobs, communities and livelihoods ravaged, Wall Street is expected to make a windfall from the upcoming sale of GM shares owned by the US government...with some analysts predicting that a GM stock sale could net $70 billion — selling at $113 to $137 a share — big financial firms stand to bring in almost $2 billion in fees, the largest haul from a single stock deal in history...In what Wall Street calls a “bake-off,” top bankers from JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have held a series of meetings with GM and Treasury officials to convince the Obama administration to select them as the lead underwriter...


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/pers-j04.shtml

[Omaha Steve]

1. We bought 2 new GM's with knowing about the bankrupcy last year

We bought Marta an 09 Equinox on Labor Day 09. Our first NEW car in 30 years.

I got an 09 Cobalt in the last week of the "Clunker" program just before Labor Day. We traded in a 91 Caprice and an 05 Nissan Altima. The Altima was our first and only foreign car ever.

We are two happy campers. The last time we bought a new car before that was 1979. A 79 Caprice Landau.

Sale Of Most GM Assets Given Green Light: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/06/business/main5135174.shtml